Be Advised: This Key Element is Missing from Your Business Strategy
Posted on in Talent Strategy
At Talent Point Consulting, we work with CEOs of rapidly growing businesses to identify the “people challenges” that are preventing them from achieving their business goals.
A common problem experienced by many of the leaders I work with is the inability to attract and retain talent. While there are different reasons for why this occurs, more often than not, it is directly linked to a missing element in their business strategy: The Talent Strategy.
Your business plan addresses your market position, product or service priorities and financial goals. In most organizations, it will be cascaded throughout the business with the expectation that everyone understands how to execute it, even though it may have been created in vacuum with zero input from those on the front lines.
This is where your talent strategy will pay dividends. Your talent strategy links to your business strategy and defines how you are going to identify, attract, recruit, onboard, develop and retain, release or rehire the people that will execute the business strategy. Failing to create a talent strategy will leave your recruiting team, or worse, HR to create their own agendas.
A business plan without a talent strategy is lacking and could impact business results. They need to fit together.
The first pillar of a talent strategy is The Talent Plan. A talent plan is the output of comparing the current talent in your organization to the future state of talent needs, based on the business strategy.
Performed at the business unit, department or function level, the end product provides an enterprise- wide view of your talent capacity and enables you to be proactive in identifying and closing the gaps.
Further, talent planning:
- Ensures a tight link between business results and the people that are making those results happen.
- Creates alignment. You know the old saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Your talent plan is your organizational “people compass” you use to navigate the business strategy roadmap.
- Unifies the team and reduces stress and noise in the talent acquisition system. The talent plan creates clarity regarding who, what, where and when you’ll add individuals to the team, which eliminates scuffles at the top (e.g. my open role is more important than yours) and helps your current team keep their eye on the recruiting ball when they meet new people in the marketplace.
- Builds awareness. No one likes surprises. If you’re not going to be able to hire the project manager you need for your new product release, you need to know that more than 4 weeks before you plan to launch.
- Places you in the driver seat to hire opportunistically. The talent plan arms you with the confidence to recruit proactively (so when you find that unicorn business intelligence person in February, but the plan says June, you have the power and knowledge to decide if you should invest now).
Not sure how to get started? Complete the form below to download our guide: “Creating A Talent Plan,” which provides additional details on creating your talent plan, including worksheets to get you moving today.
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